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super cheap moving head LED stage lights, anyone?


skidder652003

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Anyone tried these super cheap moving head LED lights you can get on ebay for £40 a pop?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/2X-70W-LED-Moving-Head-Beam-Light-Stage-Lighting-RGBW-DMX512-For-Party-KTV-Disco/183380356835?epid=7022617647&hash=item2ab2522ee3:g:4MQAAOSw~llcSTAX

We use 3 £10 static LED par can type lights clamped to the FOH speakers, that and a cheapo smoke machine and a Black cloth backdrop looks fine down the dog and duck. They've lasted about 4 years as well no problems. Just fancied a punt on a couple of these and wondered if anyone's had any experience of them?

 

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I’ve not tried them but they appear to offer a lot for what they cost and worth a punt.  

I’ll be getting a couple (or similar) when I need to replace the floor standing lights we use to light up the drum kit. 

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I'm curious too. Not that I would buy any. I don't gig, but by profession I'm a lighting engineer. *

I notice they claim a life of 100,000 hours. I doubt that. LEDs lose light output over time. It's a fact. It happens. They might "work" after 100,000 hours, but what will the output be? What is the output on day 1?

What also might happen is the colour can shift. You might find multiple lights will work, turning and changing colour, at different speeds and get out of sync...   But 100,000 hours is a long life of 2 hour sets and maybe getting out of sync is exactly what you need at the Dog 'n' Duck. At £75 you've not got a lot to lose.

* - I design lighting for commercial use. Not stage lighting.

Edited by Grangur
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The lifespan on this sort of stuff is usually dictated by the motor giving up... all the transformer giving up the ghost. I suspect 100,000 is optimistic! It'll probably be dropped or mishandled by some stray toddler that thinks it will be fun to push against the mechanism whilst it's in motion (not that I allow anybody near my stuff on stage).

You are probably right though - even my ADJ par cans have differing shades of colour now... but they've seen a lot of use over the last 5 years. They tend to be OK as long as you don't put them too close together!

Sync - maybe/maybe not. I'm planning on putting them (if I decide to get more) into an existing DMX system... so I'd hope all syncing would be taken care of there... of course, the motors breaking/slowing down may prove me otherwise!

Of course, moving heads is all well and good... but without haze, they just look a little... err... shining a light on that wall... shining a light on that wall... not quite the beam effect we all look for. (And lets face it, how many venues are keen to let us loose with a hazer nowadays?)

@Grangur - interesting that mention that you are a lighting designer. Have you any experience of addressable LED strip lighting the exterior of buildings?

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OK - had a play. Have to say for less than 40 quid each, you really can't go wrong. In real terms, there are a moving head with an equal output (arguably more) than an ADJ Tripar. They aren't the quickest of moving heads (hey, they don't cost a grand+), they are pretty well built - they are plastic, but it steel feels quite substantial, probably more so than your average equivalent plastic par (hey, they don't cost a grand+), the DMX control is compressive and provide tilt, pan and RGB control with extended flash, sound to light features if you choose the extended channel model (they don't do anything like iris, prism etc, but hey, they don't cost a grand+)

A lot of people are going to be interested in the little remote that came with it (I didn't realise it did). Comes with things like auto mode, RGB and mix colour selection (if you don't like the fit inducing colour changing routines etc)... A nice little addition I guess.

In reality, I'm probably going to buy another 7 and make up a lightweight portal moving head truss for smaller gigs and I'll build an DMX foot controller for them. 

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3 hours ago, gazhowe said:

Thanks for that @EBS_freak.  Have you tried using it with smoke or haze yet?  I'm interested to know whether the output is a fairly well defined beam or more of a wider wash-type effect. 

Yes - It's defo a wash - akin to a moving par can.  I think I found some specs somewhere that suggested the output angle was 45 degree... so not something like a beam which would typically lie at something like 6 percent.

The light is very defined though - probably brighter than the tripars I have (that are the closest thing to compare if to LED wise).

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4 hours ago, EBS_freak said:

Yes - It's defo a wash - akin to a moving par can.  I think I found some specs somewhere that suggested the output angle was 45 degree... so not something like a beam which would typically lie at something like 6 percent.

The light is very defined though - probably brighter than the tripars I have (that are the closest thing to compare if to LED wise).

Thanks again @EBS_freak.  I've got some moving heads that do beams (2 x ADJ Inno pocket spots and a Equinox slender beam bar quad) so a couple of these will be nice alternative to enable me to vary the effect lighting in our lighting setup. 😎 

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12 hours ago, gazhowe said:

Thanks again @EBS_freak.  I've got some moving heads that do beams (2 x ADJ Inno pocket spots and a Equinox slender beam bar quad) so a couple of these will be nice alternative to enable me to vary the effect lighting in our lighting setup. 😎 

Yes, they are defo a nice option for covering a lot of space. I run a very wide stage set up so getting a nice spread of colour across the stage is always quite difficult. Like all lighting, haze is key (but it's getting more difficult to allow venues to allow you use it!). The danger of moving heads is that without haze, they just tend to look like spots on the wall... like the mysterons are around or something! (Sorry to all those too young to get the reference)

Beams in haze are bang on.. Especially when they are co-ordinated.

Speaking of co-ordination - its a shame that the inbuilt automatic shows on these moving washes has a flash... it's otherwise quite tasteful.

 

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12 hours ago, EBS_freak said:

Speaking of co-ordination - its a shame that the inbuilt automatic shows on these moving washes has a flash... it's otherwise quite tasteful.

 

I run all of my lights via DMX (using an ADJ Airstream Bridge and iPad) as I've found that most inbuilt shows would result in the lights pointing in the wrong direction 50% of the time!

Edited by gazhowe
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Thanks for the photos.

I like how small they are. I'll only need them to sit behind the amps and put a bit of light movement on the wall behind us. For this i think they will be perfect.

 

My son on the other hand, will be staging Live Aid 3 in his small bedroom with them lol. He keeps on about a smoke machine but thats not going to happen.

 

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